Woman's Tea Addiction Led to Loss of Teeth, Bone Problems

MSN Healthy Living/Health Day—March 20, 2013

Here's a cautionary tale about the value of moderation.

A case study reported in the March 21 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine shows how habitually drinking an extreme form of highly concentrated tea over almost 20 years created a hard-to-diagnose case of severe bone damage in a 47-year-old woman.

Worried that she had cancer, the patient told her primary care doctor in Lansing, Mich., that she was concerned about bone pain she had been having in her lower back, arms, legs and hips for five years. She also had had all her teeth extracted due to brittleness.

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Dr. Joseph Lane, chief of the metabolic bone disease service at Hospital for Special Surgery, in New York City, said this case study shows the risk of adopting an unusual diet. "I had a patient who started taking a lot of fish oil, and then she had a minor injury and bled a lot, almost like hemophilia [a disease in which it is hard for blood to clot]. It turns out the patient had too much vitamin E in the blood," Lane explained.

Lane suggests that people talk with their physician about any change in their diet they are considering, especially if it is somewhat unusual. As for off-the-shelf food and beverage items, he suggests taking a close look at the ingredients.